Catfish Rolling

The author of this unusual debut novel is of Canadian, Irish and Japanese origin. Teenage Sora, who narrates the story, lives in modern day Japan but is constantly drawn back into a world of shrines, gods and powerful folk myths. Her account opens with a description of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, seen by some as caused when the giant catfish, on which the islands of Japan perch, periodically twists and turns in the mud below.

But this time something else happens too.  The shake, as it is called, has also broken time itself. Henceforth there are areas of fast time and others where it slows down. Existing uneasily in the middle, Sora is drawn into exploring cut off areas of past time, very much forbidden as they have a dangerous effect on all who enter them. She is convinced she may still find her mother there after she had disappeared with many others on the day of the quake.

Sora has to cope with contemporary realities too, which include a first love affair with a boy followed by another with a girl. Her father is also showing signs of dementia, with Sora’s hopes of going to university suddenly looking bleak. But there is one final adventure to come when she goes really deep into previously forbidden territory where watches no longer keep time and chasms in the road open up in front of her. At this point sentences turn into torrents with Sora repeatedly questioning time itself and whether it exists in entirely different ways in the natural world of trees and rivers. Kumagai writes with passion, and this may be enough to keep readers going through occasional plot thickets where it is sometimes hard to know what is going on. But for those with staying power this urgently committed writing is like nothing else in Young Adult fiction at the moment and well deserves attention.